So, it seems, simply anyone can score at Wembley.

I vividly remember when I scored at Wembley.  June 1995.  Late evening sunshine, well over fifty or sixty thousand in the crowd.  The roar a constant in my ears.  I wheeled away like an unsteady overweight Mick Shannon, windmilling arm, bathing in the cheers and chants.  It wasn’t too bad a goal, either, not one of those two yard tap ins that so often settle cup finals, but a nice piece of control a little over ten to twelve yards out, nice touch with the outside of the boot to set myself up, and then a right footed shot that beat the keeper on the inside post.  Memories indeed.

Tom Cairney scored at Wembley, last weekend.  A beautifully taken goal from a glorious through-ball by an eighteen-year-old Ryan Sessegnon - a wunderkind from Fulham’s Academy.  Such coolness under such pressure, from both of them.  It was a terrific victory: fine reward for a fabulous season’s work.  I even had my own Fulham shirt on in support of the team in their play-off final.  Thankfully, the snugger fit offset by the fact I’m less of an overweight Mick Shannon, these days.

I did have to breathe out eventually.

Sport is a curious thing.  It used to be that there were rewards commensurate with the performance of the team or individual.  If you won the First Division, you got a trophy and the chance to play in the European Cup.  If you won the FA Cup, you got to play in the Cup Winners’ Cup.  If you’d had a decent season and finished in the top five or six, you may get the reward of playing the UEFA cup, along with all the teams from the other European leagues that had had decent seasons too.  If you finished in the top two or three of the Second Division, you got promoted to the First, just reward for your year’s performance in the lower league.  Things change.

Now, of course, you can finish sixth and get promoted through the play-offs and after a fantastic day out at Wembley – and you get a trophy for that too.  You can have a fantastic season, finish third in the league and then miss out on promotion because a team that’s finished three places below you over forty six games nips a two yard tap in in the play-off final and takes your place as the third team into the next league up.  Due reward?  I’m not sure.

It’s the same with Super Rugby down under.  New Zealand routinely produce the best rugby teams and so the competition is fixed so that the top teams across the various pools of teams are guaranteed a place in the finals schedule of games – and with home advantage.  So, the teams from New Zealand that finish with more victories and bonus points than the teams from across the ditch win the reward of travelling to play their Australian or South African opponents, in their own backyard, after having slogged their way through an hugely competitive New Zealand season.  Due reward?  I’m not sure. Why work to get better and regularly beat the Kiwi teams if you’re already guaranteed a home place in the finals?

The play-offs in the football are a response to the monetisation of sport, and they have manufactured a big day out for their fans to Wembley.  Wembley used to be a special stadium, cup finals and internationals.  Not any more.  Tom Cairney scored there for Fulham, the other day… and then players scored for Rotherham, Shrewsbury, Coventry and Exeter.  The play-offs are popular, of that there is no doubt, but are they played out right?  Should a team that finishes sixth be rewarded with a day out at Wembley and a trophy when the teams that finish second and first don’t see the gigantic arch and their fans don’t get the big day out?  How about draw a line between the two play off finalists and play at the nearest suitable venue?  It spreads the money around, there’s still a big day out and keeps Wembley as proper reward for Cups and Internationals.  Now, pretty much anyone can score at Wembley... not just me with a beer can at a Bon Jovi gig.

...and talk about the weather...

It is Friday morning.  I am listening to the rain fall.  There is birdsong accompanying it.  It is one of the nicest sounds I know.

A curious phenomena (der der der-der-der) occurred this week.  The sun shone and the temperature rose and steadily stayed at T-shirt weather warm.  The wind hushed itself to the waftiest of breezes and the clouds fluffed themselves up nice and proper, and sat just so in the blue, blue sky.  I sat out and worked in the afternoon; a few days of being able to sit in the sunshine for a couple of hours of day and read and write and work.  One day I could see clear across to Wales and the homeland sung choirs and Sirened me but I wouldn’t budge.  The next day a beautiful haze hung over the valley and a smudged green blue grey looked back at me.  My arms went brown.

Being able to type “my arms went brown” is not something I would have been able to type over the past decade.  Down in New Zealand the sun wouldn’t brown my arms: it would red my arms.  My delicate Northern Hemisphere skin simply never came to terms with the ozoneless (is that a myth) barrage of rays that constituted weather down there.  The pity of it was that the sun didn’t actually have to be visible for me to suffer.

The last act of my dying teaching days in Otago was that of umpire for a school cricket match in Dunedin.  The first time I had experienced Dunedin weather came after I got on a bus in Oamaru in shorts and t-shirt, bathed in glorious, and then got off the bus at the train station in Dunners bathed in horizontal, cold rain and a howling wind.  Anyway, this time, fully prepared after ten years of horrible misjudgement of weather conditions, I donned my coat and hat and walked out onto the field of play ceilinged by a grey, overcast, relentlessly grey sky.  Muggy, sure, but grey; a Thomascene grey bobbing in the sky.  And I got burnt redder than a red thing that was embarrassed.  That was the practice in New Zealand for me.  I would put on sunscreen, I would wear a hat, I would put on after-sun.  I would go red.

The rain is still falling.  The birdsong is still accompanying it.  It is still the nicest sound.

I’d forgotten what it was to get a sun-tan.  I’d forgotten the Orwellian task of considering yourself a healthy looker as you corroded your covering.  The contradiction of the act hasn’t stopped me from getting out on to the bench in the gardens, here, and sitting and reading and writing and working.  The fringe of burn at the edge of the T-shirt sleeve is a comforting sensation that fades as the colour changes and becomes a brown not red façade.   The silence and the green and blue of the day is as pleasing as the fact that I am not reddening anymore.

And now, this morning and yesterday morning I have the rain.  Today is heavier and has the proper white noise mush of rainfall.  In Picton we would get this rain frequently.  It’s blanket noise, especially with the wriggly tin roof on the house, was reassuring and a blissful release for the brain.  The roof here is two floors further above me, I have no idea what sort of noise is it producing but the rain outside, occasionally enhanced by the sound of tyre on wet road, is singing a song this morning; a bubble of lush sound heartening me.

It’s going to be time to venture out into it soon.  The weather is warm, still, and the prospect of a second sunny holiday Monday hoves into view.  It’ll do me good to go out and get wet in this for a while.  To dampen any smouldering skin before the weekend comes and I sit and burn it further.  No wonder we sit and talk about the weather so often when it has an affect on us beyond the simple idea of wet and dry, warm and cold.  It can, you see, knock us head over heals.

Picture postcards...don't scratch and sniff though.

I’m in a fortunate position.  I walk around town and see postcard pictures everywhere.  Spring has kicked in, and flowers in bloom married with fresh green leaves and blossom transform the nature of the place.  Stroud is a curious town, and a common cross section of England, or so it feels to me.  Common in that affluence and poverty sit side by side in stark contrast; it is strikingly similar to New Zealand.

In the decade or so I lived in New Zealand, I spent the majority of my time in a town of a similar size and population to Stroud.  Oamaru, in fact, boasts a centre arguably as attractive as this Cotswold Town.  Both, too, are home to a clear demonstration of the disparity in wealth and lifestyle of their country’s population.  They could run side by side, matching boutique shop with boutique shop, coffee house with coffee house, bar with bar.  Each has a thriving and abstract arts community.  The major difference between the two is outlook: Oamaru has the sea, Stroud has the hills.

The only other town I lived in in New Zealand was Picton.  It serves as gateway to the south island, for those arriving by ferry, and is surrounded by the natural beauty of the Marlborough Sounds.  Oamaru, Picton and Stroud all wear the fissure between those that have and those that don’t on their sleeves.

Where I am now, I have the distinctive aroma of decay that comes from the malaise of a place that feels like its treading water.  I mean the country now, not simply Stroud.  Actually, that’s a misstatement, the country is thrashing itself around and bellowing at itself as it descends into madness trying to inch its way through the predicament it has got itself in.  The country laughs then snarls at itself as the million stabbings bleed it slowly into torpor.  Life in the communities of the country, though, feels different.

As I have said before, there is much that has changed since I have been away but only fractionally.  I still feel uncomfortable being here and hear the yelled reproach “why don’t you fuck back off to where you’ve come from, then!?” ringing in my ears as I write this.  Here is where I come from though and here was the place I very determinedly left.  Circumstance has brought me back and seeing these fractional changes simply serves to make stronger the stench of rot.

There’s the irony, of course.  Rot fertilises.  Rot should promote growth.  Rot should bed in the shoots of progress and give its roots nourishment and a sure foundation from which to grow.  That is nature’s way.  It’s there.  I see the small businesses and enterprises of the people of the town showing that growth and purpose and drive.  But the smell of shit still clings to the air.  The empty shops, the state of floor we have to walk or drive on, the inordinate prices for ordinary things, the demands on your time to provide your own slim-line service and then the gnashing teeth of officialdom, hidden behind the gum-shield of the letterhead, when the system goes wrong and they actually have to speak with you.  And the poverty.

New Zealand was as bad; although life did appear to function a lot better there - the “she’ll be right” attitude that built a nation.  Again, though, much like here, the underlying prejudice against the have nots and those of an ethnicity not white was startling – Taika Waititi wasn’t buggering around.

What do I know?  I’m just a sick bloke trying (“Very trying!” I hear you all yell) and still floundering around.  I know that coffee in Stroud still isn’t great – apart from Black Books Café, obv – and that the library is brilliant: I miss the sea and the stingrays.  I know that both the UK and NZ are tolerably decent places that don’t quite know how to get their act or heart in order.  I know that were I German or Greek I would be able to write exactly the same piece about there too.  I would however like the postcard pictures to smell of oregano or wurst, though, not just worse.

When to ask for help.

I walked passed a man, yesterday.  He was sat on his own on a bench, a backpack by his side.  He was straight legged; his ankles crossed, like his arms.  As I walked by he said, “They’re all mental patients around here.  They’re all mental.”  I couldn’t tell if he was speaking to me or just speaking out loud as I happened to walk by.  Venom and frustration were clear in his voice.  I wasn’t in the mood to speak with him and enquire why he held these feelings, so I continued on walking.

It’s clear that the world you view through your personal choice of media is distorted by your choice of what you want to watch and listen to; and by and large what is reflected back is the worldview you most readily associate or agree with or aspire to.  So, having said that, it is no surprise to me that the articles dealing with the idea of mental health or wellbeing are growing – both in terms of number and in profile.

Over the past few days, as well as the encounter in the town, a few other things have struck me about this subject. 

·      It seems to me healthy that people are willing to speak publicly of their personal frailties and the strategies they have employed to help them through the issues they deal with. 

·      In a video from years ago now, Stephen Fry was on stage speaking about the difference between American and British humour – it’s on Youtube – and he mentions that the biggest section in American bookshops is reserved for self-help books. 

·      I was sat in the library earlier this week and a lady and I fell into conversation: she mentioned her fascination with the accurate use of words and used the example, “people say they’re depressed when they don’t mean depressed, they mean dejected.”

These three things churned and swam inside what constitutes my brain, along with now this disparaging comment from the man on the bench.  The first thought being that “depressed” and “dejected” are synonyms; but I think I understood the subtle distinction the lady was trying to describe, and I began to apply this statement to myself.

I think I can see the difference between what I was feeling at the start of what I still think of in my Australian sports terminology – mental disintegration – as being dejection: sadness, a sense of loss, disconsolate.  The position I found myself in was one of my own construct; I was (am) responsible for my marriage stopping.  And I found myself employing doublethink about the situation I was in.  Like a good Party Member, I could perform this simultaneous act with such conviction I managed to fool myself, and a lot of those around me, that everything was ok.  Importantly, I did not listen to those few who could see that in actual fact everything was not ok.  One of those I chose not to listen to was someone I loved.

I still can’t work out if I didn’t listen because I thought I was strong enough to cope with the situation, that I would work through it, or because I did not think I was in a situation I needed help to get through.  I thought I was being honest all the way through this time but I can’t have had the proper capacity to convey what I was feeling, to understand what I was feeling or to face what I was feeling.  And then I fell apart.

I think I’m trying to say the notion of being able to discuss your physical and mental wellbeing more easily and with less fear of ridicule is good.  Being able to see and understand you have a problem that requires discussion is another thing entirely, and it is there that perhaps the new work lies: building the capacity in ourselves to see and understand we need help.  When that man said of the people of town, “they’re all mental”, he was right, ish.  What is needed are the structures and education that means we can recognise it and speak up… before we start needing to refer to ourselves with a piece of Australian sporting terminology.